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Collection 252 - Robert Wesley Brain. T5 Transcript.

This is a complete and accurate transcript of the oral history interview of Robert Wesley Brain
(CN 252, T5) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted,
except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. If the
transcriber was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted
after the word or phrase in question. If the speech was inaudible or indistinguishable, "[unclear]"
was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations, such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. Readers
should remember that this is a transcription of spoken English, which, of course, follows a
different rhythm and rule than written English.

... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the
part of the speaker.

.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.

() Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.

[] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.

This transcription was made by Christopher Easley and Paul Ericksen, and completed in January
1992.

Collection 252, T5. Interview of Robert Wesley Brain by Paul A. Ericksen on October 26, 1987.

ERICKSEN: This is an oral history interview with Robert Wesley Brain by Paul Ericksen for the
Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place in Downers
Grove, Illinois, on Monday, October 26th, 1987 at 6:30 p.m. [Tape recorder turned off and
restarted] Well, Bob, I'd like to start by having you describe your expulsion from...from Zambia.
Could you begin by just giving maybe a simple chronology of the events?

BRAIN: Yes, Paul. It happened this way. It was New Years Day, the first of January, and I had
gone across a little river to a...a church out there, that has just been accepted as a full-time
church, or a full-fledged church, to meet with them for their New Years Day services. And the
service had just started and a jeep pulled up. One of the men in the church went out to...to meet
them and after a few moments he came to the door and signaled to me through the door to come
out. And I went out, picked up my hymn book and...and things, Bible. And the men out there, (it
was a...it was a police vehicle), they said that there's somebody at my house that wants to see me.
So I said, "Fine." And I jumped on my Isuzu [motorcycle] and drove over, and when I got over
there I found another vehicle and some plain clothes men sitting around my backyard. One of the
men got up and came to me and he said, "I'd like to see you in the office." And I said, "Fine." So
I opened the door and in we went, and I offered him a seat and he declined. So then he informed
me that he was from immigration, and that he had come to take me into Lusaka and that I was
being deported, and that I wouldn't be back again. Well, even though I understood perfectly what
he was saying, the facts [laughs] of the situation didn't register in my thinking, and I asked him if
it would be possible for me to defend myself, whatever the charges are, and would I know and so
on. And he said, "Yes. When you get into Lusaka, we would...we'll take you into immigration
and we will tell you what the charges are and why you're being deported." I went into the house
and called Joan out and she heard the information as well, and he looked at his watch and he said,
"We're in a hurry to get to Lusaka. It's a three hundred mile drive." So I said, "Well, could I have
a few minutes to throw some things in the suitcase and a sandwich?" And he said, "Oh yeah, but,
you know, we're in a hurry" sort of thing. So I think in about twenty minutes we were on the
road into Lusaka. We should have Joan here at this point because she called the other
missionaries and they came up and they just broke down crying and embraced one another and
had prayer, and decided that they should go out to Kaoma immediately to our nearest telephone,
so that by means of the telephone they could inform field headquarters in Lusaka. So they did
that and, of course, we never saw one another again, because we were ahead of...of their car.
And they got into Lusa...Kaoma and telephoned to our head office. Fortunately, they got through
because sometimes it's really a difficult process to get a phone call through. And they talked
to...to the folks and they said, "Well, we will call the American embassy, and if we don't call you
back in twenty minutes you call us." So they did that and then they went back to Luampa, where
they stayed around until Monday. Now I'll just drop that there; that pertains my wife. And we'll
pick it up. We drove on in to Lusaka with them. And driving along in a car, I didn't have much
time to think or to meditate on what was happening or realize the implications of it. But that
afternoon, we got into Lusaka too late to...to get into the prison, so they took me to Central
Police Station. Somehow all through the trip I felt that perhaps they would trust me and put me
out at mission headquarters, provided I would appear the next morning, some kind of a, you
know, an accomodation like that. But now, they took me right to the police station and
registered me there at the...at the desk. I had to take my shoes off and my belt and empty my
pockets and my watch. And they even wanted to take my glasses, but I insisted that I needed
those in order to see, so they let me in and walked me into the back of the police station and put
me in a room and clunck the door behind me [laughs]. And I think it was just then and there that
the whole situation really hit me, and I realized that, you know, these fellows weren't [laughs]
fooling around. There was absolutely nothing in the room. No chairs, no bed, no bedding,
nothing. Just a concrete floor. It was a room about the size of this bedroom [approximately 15' x
17'] I suppose with windows high up and just bars across them, no glass or windows in them at
all. Oh, I forgot to say that while they were registering me and so on, I asked them if they
wouldn't call the American embassy and inform them that I was here at Central Police Station. I
figured that I might get a better response if I did it that way than to ask them to call mission
headquarters because sometimes, you know, "We don't have a phone number and we don't know
the Africa Evangelical Fellowship" or as were known out there, the Evangelical Churches in
Zambia. So I asked them to call American embassy, which apparently they did because around
eight o'clock that night the men from headquarters came in with food and we sat around in the
foyer while I ate supper and talked and chatted, and then we had prayer together. It was a
difficult experience for all of us. I know I was broken up and some of the men were too. And
the...the head of our mission, who is a Zambian, Tsem Kasonzo [sp.?], he just looked at me. He
said, "Boy, I wish...I could wish that I was in your place," or words to that effect, something..."I
should be in your place" or something like that. So as we were getting up and I was preparing to
go back into the cell, they asked if they could give me a blanket and a pillow, and the police said,
"Yes." So Glenn Henderson went out to the car and he brought back a blanket, and it was one of
these quilted blankets that, I presume, some ladies missionary society had made. And it was
intended, I suppose, to...just to throw on top of a bed, and it wasn't a full sized blanket. In fact,
only...really short, maybe four and a half feet. So as I lay there in the room [laughs], just myriads
of mosquitoes came through those windows. They were in there before, of course, and I would
pull the blanket up over my head and the mosquitoes would tackle my feet, [child's voice in the
background] and then I'd pull it down over my feet and they'd come up to my head. And this is
what went on most of the night. I...I didn't sleep at all. And I think that's when I really...it really
hit me. We had received a tape from a pastor friend in Massachusetts that preached a sermon
asking several questions and I could only remember two of them. And the two that I remembered
were these: "Why this?" and "Why me?" And he answered these questions from the Scripture.
So this was a great source of comfort and strengthening to me. I know from a human standpoint,
I...I questioned and had a struggle in my own heart, but the Lord led me to remember that Joseph
was falsely imprisoned for two years [Genesis 39:20-41:14], and I...I was only in there for that
one night...sort of thing. And I remembered as well Paul and Silas [Acts 16:16ff]. They were put
in prison had been beat...beaten and their backs were bleeding, but they hadn't mistreated me at
all. So I...even though I was perhaps feeling really sorry for myself, I had these [pauses]...these
things that the Lord gave me to comfort me. Many times during the night, I found it even difficult
to pray, except to say, "Lord, give me grace." And it was an amazing thing. Every time I prayed
that prayer there was a...a voice, an answer came to my heart. It wasn't an audible voice that I
could hear. But the answer came back, "My grace is sufficient." [2 Corinthians 12:9] And it was
just amazing. It was something outside of me. It wasn't my own mind repeating what [pauses]
the answer that Paul heard in Second Corinthians, chapter eleven, but it was definitely something
outside of me speaking in my heart. I've never had that experience before and I haven't had it
since. But it was very real and the Lord was very, very real to me at that time. Well, by this time
the mission officials had called our international office in London, and they had called the
American office and friends and relatives, and people were praying [child shouting in background]
almost all over the world because our mission has outlets in Australia and South Africa and in
New Zealand, Canada, and America, and people were really praying for me. And I think it was
this undergirding of prayer that really sustained me and Joan during that difficult experience. I
didn't sleep much that night and then the next morning, about ten o'clock, the immigration
authorities came back again and took me out. And I thought, "Well now, he's going to do what
he promised. He's going to take me to headquarters and tell me why I am being deported, and
perhaps I'll have a chance to answer and make some kind of appeal and I was quite sure in a way
that the Lord would work things out, and I'd get back to my position and responsibilities there
at...at Luampa, at Manna Bible Institute. But I noticed from the route that they were taking that
they weren't going towards immigration headquarters. And then finally we pulled up outside a
building, and I could tell from the barbed wire and so on above the tall brick wall that this was a
prison. So again I was taken in there and registered and went through the same procedure, and
then ushered through a second set of doors in to a courtyard. And at that point, the thing that
really hit me was the fact that there was a sea of faces, probably from a hundred and fifty to two
hundred and fifty faces looking at me and I was the only white man. And I just stood there, you
know. I just didn't know where to turn, where to go. I didn't know where I was going to sleep or
anything, what I was going to have to eat [clears throat]. But the Lord had gone before and there
were some other prisoners in there, South Africans, that had come up into Zambia as tourists.
And they came out of the crowd and came up to me and shook my hand, and we introduced
ourselves, and exchanged greetings and so on. And among them there was a black fellow. I
thought it was kind of unusual, because generally, the Zambians kind of keep their distance, but
this fellow came right up, and I found out that he was from South Africa. He was a member of
one of the parties opposing the South African government and stationed in one of the countries
nearby. But when the party decided to perpetrate violent acts, he decided that this was not the
way to go and he defected and fled. There were five of them in the group and they all took
different directions and he decided that he would come to Zambia. But of course at the border,
he didn't have any papers or anything and they picked him up and he'd been in prison there for
over a year and a half without any recourse or help. I just felt so sorry for him. He had contacted
the American embassy and they had interviewed him and so on, and there was a possibility that he
could come here to the States as a refugee, but nothing developed. He said he had given up hope.
And then he had contacted the Amer...the United Nations Commission for Refugees, or
something like that. And he was hoping that perhaps somehow they would help him out of his
predicament. But as we stood there in a circle and were exchanging questions and answers, this
fellow [pauses] came up and put his arm around me. He says, "I'm going to get some hot water
for you and you're going to have a bath." I don't think that there was anything better that he
could have done to make me feel happy or welcome in jail [laughs], if you can welcome anybody
in jail. But that was the situation. And...well, after that, it was just a matter of fitting in. We
were very, very fortunate because these South Africans, they...they had succeeded in getting an
old pan with a hole in it that they stuffed fu...full or stuffed with a...with some African mush that
they use. It's corn flower mixed with water, and they were able to cook there food in that so we
didn't have to eat the food that was being prepared there by the prisoners in the jail. And then,
when Joan came in on Monday, (that was about two or three days after I got there), she was
permitted to come and visit me every day, and was able to bring food supplies like vegetables and
meat. Sometimes they were precook them and sometimes they would just bring them like that
and it gave us something to do. This prison was built by the British over thirty years ago for
seventy people, and there was four hundred fifty in the prison. There were four cells in the
prison. Two of the cells accommodated a hundred and twenty men each, and in the other cell
there was over two hundred. There were no beds, or there wasn't a chair in the whole of the
prison. No running water, no flush toilets. There was one tap out in the courtyard which didn't
even have a turn off valve on it. It just ran day and night fed by gravity. And all day long there'd
be long lines of men standing there trying to get water. And from this tap they would draw water
to supply for the cooking needs as well as laundry for all of the men, and washing, and just
everything came from that one tap. So sometimes it was a problem to get...to get water. In these
cells, the cell where I was in, [pauses] we all slept on the ground, and around the outside of the
cell with our heads towards the wall, all the way around, was the first kind of line of men. And in
that outside ring of men, were, shall we say, the most favored prisoners. Then on the inside there
were two rows, just straight rows, with their feet interlaced with the feet of the men on the
outside row. And the two rows had their head head to head sort of thing. And the two center
rows were men that had just been brought in, and they were really treated roughly by the others.
And they had to sleep so tightly that the whole row would have to turn over at the same time.
And they had...what they had...what they called peacekeepers in the prison and if one man didn't
turn over with the others, was asleep or something like that, they'd go over there and really beat
him up to make him [laughs] be more careful next time. We would be locked in our cells from
four o'clock in the afternoon until about nine in the morning. If the weather was good we'd
c...we'd be allowed out in the courtyard, but if the weather was bad we'd have to say in our cells
because the courtyard would become flooded and the cesspools would overrun, and it was just
terrible out there. So we prayed for sunshine days [laughs] and good weather. When we were
first locked in our cells about four o'clock in the afternoon, we would march in past the police.
They would count us to make sure the proper number was admitted and they'd keep record of
that. And then the last to come in in line would stand at the door and sing some hymns. They
sung in language that I didn't know, but I recognize them as hymns because of the tunes. And
then after they finished singing, they would go to their various beds and sit there or lay down on
the floor. And then they would have a court in which they would try prisoners, inmates. This
was an internal system of [laughs]...of government, and law keeping and order.

ERICKSEN: In the cell?

BRAIN: Yeah, right in the cell. So that one of the prisoners was a captain and he'd have four
sergeants, or three. Each one of these slept in one of the corners of the room. And then there
were four kee...four peacekeepers, and they would try men because all of the prisoners they had
chores to do, sweep the floor or clean the toilets or sweep the courtyard outside or prepare the
food or light the fires, and they all had something to do. They were assigned these duties and if
any of these men slipped up in the slightest or didn't sweep the floor properly or talked back to
somebody or...or had an argument or stole somebody else's food or something like that, then they
would administer disc...discipline. They'd take the fellow by the neck, back of the neck, and make
him stoop over and one of these peacekeepers would whack him with all his strength on...on his
back in the kidney area.

ERICKSEN: With?

BRAIN: Just his...his palm...the palm of his hand. And these...these men were big [laughs].
They were big men. And the...the man would get anywhere from one to five or even up to twenty
whacks. And at first it really shocked me. You...I thought, "My, you'd think they would have
mercy on one another." They were suffering enough without having to go through this as well.
And, oh, many times the men would be beaten so badly. They they just lay there on the floor, just
writhing in pain. But I began to see the...the...the fact that this discipline maintained law and
order there in the camp, and I...I sensed that there was a real...a high morale among the inmates.
I didn't see any fights or...or anything that, you know, you would call serious. In a prison back
here in this country, if you had a group of men like that together, they'd be fighting and stabbing
one another and carrying them out on stretchers [unclear word]. But that never happened over
there. Generally speaking they were very jovial and happy and friendly. As time went on, I got to
know different men and we talked, and I had many opportunities to...to witness to them,
especially to this fellow from South Africa. I found that he had come from a Christian family, but
I don't think that he made any commitment to the Lord. However, one of the white prisoners that
had been in there for over eight months, that had come in properly documented and everything as
a tourist, passport and all the papers, he said that he...he came back to the Lord, and we had many
times of good fellowship and praying together and opportunities to ask questions and exchange
ideas and so on. So it was a...a really...time of...of many opportunities. Getting back now to the
cell, after the...the trial, then the men would sit around sort of thing on their...on their blankets.
By the way, we were all issued blankets in the cell there. But the condition of the blankets, they
were a very cheap type of cotton blanket and they were dirty and smelly and just contaminated
with body lice. It was just terrible. The first night I was there, my body just broke out in these
sores, especially around my stomach area from these things. And you'd find them in your clothes
and in your pajamas the next morning. So, Joan was able to get me a...a container of
Cooper...Cooper Powder, lice powder, and I would spread this liberally all over my blankets
[laughs] and pillow and into my pajamas and so on, and.... But you'd have to keep it up.
Otherwise they'd be in the next night back to tackle you. The toilet facilities there in the...in
the...in the cell for a hundred and twenty men was simply just a single hole in a concrete slab, and
there was no water or anything in there to flush it down. And the odor and the flies and
everything, it was just something that...it's just just amazing that the Lord kept me from getting
any disease. I know that there were a lot of men.... In fact, during the twenty-seven days I was in
there they...five men died in prison, and they took them out. And I know that many of them had
hepatitis, because you could see that they became jaundiced and their eyes were very yellow. And
one of the white fellows from South Africa also came down with a...a serious attack of jaundice
and they took him to the university hospital there in Lusaka to treat him. Every evening, these
captains would have a...a...a program sort of planned, and it was more or less a routine thing, but
it changed from night to night. Some nights they would [clears throat] have a...a contest, a form
of a contest, and the room would be divided between team A and team B, and there'd be like forty
questions. "How far away is the moon?" and...and this sort of thing, different questions. And if
team A would answer it correctly, then people would yell and scream and whistle and it really hurt
my ears until finally I was able to get some cotton and stick it in [laughs] my ears because it really
hurt. Other nights, they may have these teams perform different African songs and dances. And
again they'd award points and team A or team B would win. And it was a way of occupying their
mind and their thinking. Sometimes they would sing rock music and mimic a m...somebody
playing a guitar and sing along sort of thing. And again they would award points, and there'd be a
lot of noise and clapping and yelling and shouting. It was during those times that I was able to lay
on...on my bed and read the Bible. And this is something that I...I really missed in prison. And
I've come to appreciate more than ever before was the fact that during those twenty-seven days I
was in prison, I never, never had a single moment where I could be quiet or I could get where it
was quiet. There was just always movement and commotion and people running around and
playing and pushing one another and yelling and screaming. Not from the standpoint of anger but
playing, just occupying themselves. And there wasn't anyplace you could go, even
[pauses]...everything you did, even when you went to the Bible...into...into the bathroom, there
was always just people looking around. You couldn't take a shower. People always looking at
you. And in...in the war...in the cells, the only way that you could get dressed would be to pull a
blanket and hold it over your shoulders as you took your pajamas off and...and got dressed for the
day. So I really missed privacy and times when one could be quiet and read and...and...and pray.
And I've come to appreciate that, I think, more than ever before, before I went through this
experience. About ten o'clock, the programs would be over. Oh, I forgot to mention, sometimes,
in fact, twice a week, they would have religious services. And I had opportunities to speak. And
I noticed in the prison that there were quite a few Muslims. They had been picked up by the
Zambian authorities probably for smuggling or something like that, I don't know. But, knowing
that they don't acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as...as the Son of God or acknowledge his
deity, I had opportunity, and it was just after the Christmas season to...to speak along the lines of
turning to Old Testament prophecy, and showing how this was fulfilled in the New Testament. I
was a little bit at a disadvantage because I didn't have a...a complete Bible. I only succeeded in
getting.... Well, I should put it this way, I took a New Testament with me, and I never realized
that I could have used the whole Bible [laughs]. But after a few days I found that at one corner in
the cells, there were stacks of about twenty doll...or twenty copies of Bibles in the different
languages, Zambian languages, as well as one or two Bibles [pauses] in English. So I was able to
use these and pick up the prophesies and I used those in my messages. I spoke in English, and
there was an interpreter there, a Zambian, [clears throat] and he really was very fluent, very good,
excellent and apparently he'd had lots of experience translating. But he was a Jehovah's Witness,
so I...knowing this I was just praying all along that [laughs] he would be led to say what I said
and to put the emphasis where I put it. Most of the services were conducted by Jehovah's
Witness...a pastor. I believe he was from, well, let's put it this way, he was from one of the
neighboring countries, and had tried to sneak into Zambia and was picked up. And he did most of
the preaching, and did it in English. And I don't...I know what Jehovah's Witnesses teach and I
don't accept their doctrine at all, but I must confess that his preaching was very evangelical, very
Biblical about salvation and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and confessing our sins and making
things right and changing our life. I would have no quarrel at all with what he said. Maybe he
wasn't a real Jehovah's Witness in the sense that he didn't realize what Jehovah's Witness really
teach, but had allied himself with this group because they offered him, I suppose, this opportunity.
But anyway, after the service or the program, whatever it was, everybody had to get on their bed
and lay down and be quiet, and then it was kind of like a bedtime story. One of the men would
tell a story. And it would go on and on and on until everybody was asleep, and then finally it
would be quiet. And this would be between ten and eleven at night. Early in the next morning,
the next morning, there would be a loud bang on the door and the policemen would come in, and
count heads, as it were, to see that everybody was in there. After they left we'd all lay down
again, [clears throat] and about a half hour to an hour afterwards, another man would come in and
stand at the door and call names. He would call out the names of the men that were to be taken
out of the prison to court to be tried that day. Then the...the door would be closed again. Then
about nine o' clock they would open the doors and we'd all go outside. And breakfast was
normally beans, outside of corn that was cooked. Cooked corn, like a...a...a cereal, cooked
cereal, and if you were lucky you could get a little bit of sugar and put on it. I ate that several
times because it was cooked and I felt it was safe. But after we really got our system organized,
normally we would eat in our cells before we got out at nine o'clock. And we had friends outside
that would bring us hot water, and with this hot water we would make coffee and we'd have
powdered milk, so we'd have milk and we'd have coffee and maybe some bread that we had
[pauses] received the day before. So that's...that would be our breakfast and then we would cook
our meals as I mentioned before. One hot meal a day.

ERICKSEN: How would you cook?

BRAIN: Well, we had this pan and there was firewood inside there where they used it to prepare
their food. So we would take a few sticks of firewoood and go off into a corner and prepare our
own meals that way. And normally it would be like one...one dish, like a stew dish, everything all
thrown in together. At fors...at first we didn't have dishes to go around, and we'd all reach into
the same pot with our fingers and eat. But gradually, Joan was able to bring in various plastic
containers so that we could divvy out and have our own little dish and we got some plastic spoons
in, so we wouldn't have to [laughs] eat with our fingers.

ERICKSEN: Now when you say "we," who do you...?

BRAIN: This would be the South African prisoners that were in there.

ERICKSEN: Okay. What kind of...who [sic] were the crimes that the prisoners were charged
with?

BRAIN: I would say a large majority of them were Zambians and they were charged for petty
[pauses] theft. There were some of us who were strangers in there from other countries. Even
blacks from other countries, like Nigeria and Gabon and countries like that. And I'm sure that
they were in there for smuggling like diamonds or...or other precious stones and possibly drugs.

ERICKSEN: So it wasn't a [pauses]...a jail or a prison for more dangerous criminals...

BRAIN: No.

ERICKSEN: ...murderers or....

BRAIN: No, no, no. No, there were...there were some young...young children in there and it
was shocking to see that instead of being locked into a ward by themselves, they were just farmed
out to the prison. And they were used during the night by some of the men. It was really a
shocking thing for me to see [laughs]. About the third day after I was in there, immigration came
back and they served me with a deportation notice, which I had to sign. And they said that any
time that the...the mission or that I produced tickets, plane tickets, that I was free to leave the
country. But in talking this over with the mission authorities, we felt that we should try to
explore the possibility of...of finding out why I was being deported. And I agreed to this because
I wanted the situation cleared up too. So the mission authorities, they went around to different
government offices, back and forth, and they just got the runaround. The American embassy was
very helpful, especially the vice consul, but they couldn't get anywhere either. So, after about,
well maybe after [pauses] twenty...maybe twenty-three, twenty-four days, our international
director flew down from London and met with an executive committee of the Evangelical
Cchurch of Zambia. This is the organizha...organization that I worked under. And they decided
that my imprisonment was serving no useful purpose and that they should buy the tickets and then
we could leave. And this is what happened. So Joan and I flew to London, and there...we were
there for two weeks.

ERICKSEN: So did you ever, while you were in the country, did you ever know what...you
never knew what your charges were?

BRAIN: No, no. I never knew what the charges were. I was conscious, even when I first came
to Luampa, and I knew that there in the Luampa area there were very, (how shall I word
it?)...there were...there were very high tensions between two tribes locally, the Mbunda and the
Luchazi tribe. The...these tensions and this jealousy between these two tribes predated our...our
arrival. And when we first arrived there, we worked...I worked with the Mbunda translation team
because they had been working trying to [pauses] finish the New Testament for years and years.
And several missionaries, (I think it was a total of three missionaries), had tried to work with
them and they just couldn't prepare it. They were...this Mbunda tribe is...is...they're very hard to
get along with, very difficult, very argumentative, even among themselves. If you go out into the
country, you will never find a large Mbunda village. It would be a small group of maybe two or
three families, that's all, whereas if you go to a Luchazi village it would be a vi...big village with
maybe fifty, sixty families in it or even more. They just can't get along with themselves. They
can't get along with anybody. It just seems to be part of their nature. So while I worked with
these men on the New Testament, I had no problems at all. And missionaries warned me...there
was a missionary there called [pauses] Alice Will. I knew her as Auntie Alice [laughs]. And she
warned me, "Bob," she said, "be careful, because whoever works with Mr. Cavita, he always
turns against them." And I couldn't believe it, because in our work together with this translation
team, we just really enjoyed warm Christian fellowship, praying together and discussing the
various problems and so on over the words in the text as we went through the New Testament.
And I just couldn't believe it. I didn't believe her. I just said, "Well, those missionaries that
worked with them, they're the ones that must have been hard to get along with because they
could.... This fellow is, you know, he doesn't show this." But as time went on I had a rude
awakening [laughs]. We finished the New Testament. It was published by the British Bible
Society, and in 1980 I received the permission from the mission authorities to open Manna Bible
Institute. And when we did, right away the language issue came...came into focus, and these
Mbunda people wanted me to use Mbunda. Well [clears throat]...well, I can understand it.
They're very, very close. I had grown up using Luchazi, and the whole Bible was translated in
Luchazi, and I just felt that it was, you know, logical and proper for me, from those two rea...for
those two reasons, to use the Luchazi language. And that's when they started their opposition. It
was just one thing after the other. In the meantime, this Mr. Cavita, he got himself into hot water
[child cries in background] because of some incident that happened between him and the general
secretary of our mission, who was a Zambian. They had had some differences at a general council
meeting, and when Sam came up for reelection, this Mr. Cavita stood up in public and tried to
urge the people there at Luampa not to vote for Sam to go back in as general director. I wasn't at
the station then. In fact, I was home here on furlough. This would...this happened back in '82,
'83. And the men [clears throat] that heard Mr. Cavita say what he did urging the church not to
vote for Sam and the way he said it, sensed that it wasn't a...a Christlike opposition. And he was
scheduled to preach the next Sunday in church. So they got together with the deacons and...and
felt that they should go to Cavita and tell him that they didn't feel that he should preach because of
his attitude, not because of his opposition but because of his attitude in opposing. Well, he got
mad and said that they had put him out of fellowship and he wouldn't come to church and this was
the beginning of two or three years of problems with Mr. Cavita. And when I got back there I
found this thing already in process. And because of my involvement with a local church, (I was a
member of the board of deacons), the acting pastor came to me one day and he said, "A lady
came to me and she reported to me that she heard Mr. Cavita say that he was going to kill three
people in the church," and he named the three people. One of them was the acting pastor and two
others. And I thought that the church should have gone into this but they never did. And I feel
that this is just typical of African church discipline. And years went by and, of course, in the
meantime Mr. Cavita could no longer work on the translation work, and he couldn't work on the
Old Testament. They were trying to do that by themselves. And this thing built up momentum
until finally the pressure was so great at a [door opens and closes]...at a general church meeting it
was to be decided whether or not (this was the final day), now whether or not Mr. Cavita could
legitimately go back into the office and do the translation work. And I was at that meeting. And
the whole thing was just going, just being carried, as it were, and I saw that he was going to be
put back in again. So I stood up and I said, "I have heard this, that someone reported that Mr.
Cavita threatened to kill two people." And in African culture, in African society, when you make
a threat like that it's through witchcraft, it's not walking up to somebody with a pistol [paper
rustles] and shooting them, which is bad enough, but by means of witchcraft. So I said, I don't
know if this is true or not. [continued on 252 - T6]